"Race" Tractor

[mr.mindless]

I picked this up for $250 missing a couple parts and not running.

Sarah's dad has had a PILE of old wheelhorse tractors out behind their house forever, and they contain most of the missing parts.

I'm short a seat and some front tires, I hope those rear big bois last. If they aren't tubed, I should probably tube them. If they're tubed they're probably fine.

I have weak spark out of it after swapping on a parts starter/generator and filing the points. I went through a few coils before I filed the points, so hopefully I just have a weak coil on it right now. So I've got about 10 days to get it ship-shape

KoT rules state no gearing changes, must be 2wd, suspension design is open and wheelbase remains within 6" of stock. I've been shopping for a cheap quad frontend to put on to eliminate the horrible front spindle durability that all garden tractors are plagued with and I just found one. This will need some skid plating to protect the hydro drive motor and its supply lines, and some better running boards to keep feet out of the tires, and I need a seat. but it ought to be a gem.

The "only" down side is that it's already a big tire machine and geared as such, so I can't put giant tires on it to speed it up.

[mr.mindless]

[mr.mindless]

The Case 444 is supposed to have the same 14hp 312a as my Deere 140 does (several differences, like the Deere has a starter and magneto instead of starter/generator of all the rest), but this is marked as a 12hp. Looks identical otherwise. 2 of those wheelhorse tractors have that same engine.

[dubt]

This is awesome. Hunter is very jealous.

[M4wdFab]

i had a sweet machine in my middle school years that i swapped the sprockets on it so instead of a 1:3 reduction it was a 3:1 that powered the 4speed trans axle.

thing would legit do like 35mph in 3th gear but shifting was a little hard being non synchro (at the time i knew nothing what that ment lol)

in the end i donated it to my uncles scrap pile after apparently a zip screw made its way into one of the valves effectivly halving its HP and killing one of the cylinders. 

was good times, plowed a few winters with chains on it with a homemade plow

[mr.mindless]

Gotta make it go before i get into this, but looks promising. There’s a hydro cooler behind the grille, that could be a challenge for shock mounting and it might need to move. Springs may be a little stiff too, surprised me a bit. Chassis was a Warrior 350. Front drum brakes were a bit of a surprise. I’ll probably ignore those? But I could potentially hook all to the brake pedal if I wanted to have serious stopping power from 9mph.

[etk300ex]

oh lord

[mr.mindless]

Had the wrong plug installed. Gapped so wide it wouldn’t spark.

Cataloged all my coils though. Only one not reasonably close to expected spec and none completely garbage.

With this tractor count I sure do have a lot of coils now though.

Successfully replumbed fuel, ram a few laps around. Blown front tires stayed on which means it’s got almost no front weight. That atv suspension might be a wasted effort. _IF_ I didn’t see front spindle showing behind the tires already. Those quad hubs are going on with the beam or with ifs.

Reasonably fast in high gear. Didn’t make a shifter to go low yet.

[mr.mindless]

Trans out, diff welded, back in.

The differential case wouldn’t take any heat, it just ran away from the bead immediately. The side and spider gears welded to each other real nicely though. 33” tires and 12hp won’t hurt it I’m sure.

Front axle is out, need to pull the hydro resi and cooler out, and I think this is going to lay out nicely.

Everything still clears fine on the a-arms _if_ the upper shock mounts need to move outboard.

Steering should be easy, push/pull just needs an arm off the Yamaha column. That’s the one area that’ll be a bit tight.

Have some good mounting points for a rear bumper.  Not sure what I’ll do in front.

Will be disappointed when the rear tires shred and ruin my day. Not sure if disappointed enough to shell out 300-400 bucks for new.

[mr.mindless]

I’m thinking due to difficulty of supporting the shock mount around the cooling fan, the mounts are going to go outboard. Remaining bottom frame is going to be angled up to brace to the factory frame. Going to have to hack the remaining axle support more than a bit to get steering through, unless I just go over it with a bent link

[M4wdFab]

i have 4 or 5 kid size fox air shocks and a rack steering  from like mini baha car

[mr.mindless]

Almost made it steer backwards like a dumbass. Realized my mistake without having to undo anything.

Ifs is full welded except a couple braces and, importantly, shock mounts.

Back to work tomorrow. Probably be nearly finished by end of Tuesday? Taking TWF off, just working Mon & Thurs.

[mr.mindless]

Repackaging hydro tank and cooler around shock mounts and steering was a worse challenge than expected. Hydro moved way back after removing fan and pto from engine. Going to count on engine cooling air to be enough extra air draw through the cooler. Maybe a mistake for an endurance race? Maybe fine. Have to move it up an inch or two as well to clear the IFS steering linkage from tractor box input. Makes shock mounting extremely easy being able to run straight across in front of everything though. Should be done in a couple more hours.

I thought long and hard about rear tires today. Pattern is 6 on 6, wheels are 16s.

Not enough meat on the axle flange to go to a 6.5” pattern. I do have some steel 17x7 wheels that are useless to me, but no good material to build spacer+adaptors for them to run spare 37x12.5 Toyos.

I decided I’m not willing to cut up the stock tractor wheels to use the Case centers with the steel 17” wheels. I think I’m going to hold to that. If i happen to think of some other way to recenter those 17s and have the time to do it I’ll seriously think about it though. If I can re mount the fenders to clear them plus not kill myself with the tires.  I do have a fair bit of material to build similar fenders, larger.

Much larger rear tires does screw up IFS angles a bunch.

[mr.mindless]

Now I want to make it faster!






That exhaust definitely gets a little warm back by the dash. Easiest mounting for big dumb muffler off the backhoe. Needs a brace on that.

No bumpers and have not splashed any paint. Not sure either will actually happen?

Solid 15 min around the yard doing dumb stuff, it’s pretty great.

[M4wdFab]

nice!  lots of completion since my visit!  looks great

no to paint!